by S. Rose
“I’d love to stay and chat, Hester, but I didn’t come here to reminisce about old times. Just know this: I’ve got my eye on you, and your rotten nephew. He’d better quit tormenting poor Timmy. There’re laws protecting the disabled. Not to mention the laws of decency.”
“YOUR DAD WAS great! Your mom, too,” Sparrow said later on. “My ma was afraid to open her mouth. She’s embarrassed about her accent in front of the principal and scared to death of The Hatchet. My pa came to school once and tried to stick up for me, tried to stick up for Timmy, too, but Mrs. Moore said he had no legal claim to either of us. That’s the only beef I got with Mrs. Moore: she won’t even let my pa into the school now.”
“It’s probably some dumb rule she has to follow. At least she allowed you move to Miss Summer’s class and be called by your Indian name; I mean, your real name. But what’s going on with Timmy?” I asked.
“He already getting picked on real bad. It’s the same bullshit every year, even though Mrs. Moore gives a talk to Timmy’s class—all the kids in his grade and the years before and after, too. He waits in the nurse’s office while she explains what it means to be a hemophiliac and tells them to take care around him. She even warns them that if anybody was to hit Timmy or push him on purpose, it would be a serious offense, and they’d be held responsible for his injury.”
“Has anybody hurt him on purpose?”
“Well, nobody dares touch ’im, but they hurt ’im plenty with words. Then he, uh . . . he hits his own self.”
“Why would he do a thing like that?”
“When Timmy gets real upset, he starts smacking himself in the face with both hands and hollering. It’s hard to stop him once he gets going. I guess Timmy can only take the teasing so long before he explodes. Last year, Horace Hatchet got him riled up, and Timmy smacked hisself until he had a bad bleed. Timmy had to go to the hospital; his face was blown up like a giant tomato . . . his eyes were all bloodshot. That sack ’o shit Horace didn’t even get in trouble. He said Timmy was lying, said he’s just crazy and hit himself for nothing and it wasn’t his fault. The Hatchet backed him up and then tried to get Timmy sent to a school for retarded kids. They couldn’t do it, though. Timmy’s slow, but he ain’t retarded. He can read and write. Ma was pretty upset.”
“That’s awful . . . poor Timmy.”
“Yeah, and those jackasses are at it again this year, egged on by Horace the Horrible. They push up their noses like this,” she demonstrated with her middle finger on the tip of her nose, “and snort at Timmy like a pig. The boys call him Schitschack. Nobody will eat lunch with him . . . nobody will even talk to Timmy Schimschack, unless it’s to say somthin’ nasty. His life’s a misery . . . and kids have always made fun of me too, ’cause he’s my brother. That’s why I dumped Amanda Jane on her ass. I told her that next time I’d give her a black eye to go with her black heart. She hasn’t dared open her mouth around me since. I had to stay after school for a week and write, ‘I will act like a lady in school,’ about a million times on the blackboards, but it was worth it.”
“That’s not fair. The boys are always shoving each other around on the playground, even in the halls when the teacher isn’t looking, and I haven’t seen them get in much trouble.”
“They get away with more stuff, but it’s partly because they don’t tattletale on each other. Girls go runnin’ to the teacher, crying over every little thing.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
23
I HEARD SPARROW groan softly when the teacher wrote our first homework assignment on the blackboard—it didn’t look that bad to me. I invited her to come to my house after school, so we could do it together. I usually got my homework done straight away, then I could play before supper. Sparrow usually went home to muck out the goat shed and get ready for the evening milking, which was part of the reason she almost never finished her homework. We stopped at their house so she could ask permission to go home with me instead. Anna was delighted; she insisted on taking over the early evening chores so we could study together and still have time to play.
Sparrow was smart but had never got very good grades; it didn’t help that there were no books at home, not even a dictionary. They did have a Bible, but it was written in Polish. Sometimes she brought books home from the school library, but by evening it was hard to read in the dim light of the overhead bulbs. I was on a mission to help her catch up academically this year but kept my scheme a secret.
“There,” I said with satisfaction as I shut the history book. Two weeks into school, and our afternoon homework sessions had become a habit. We’d been working in our usual spot, sprawled out on my bedroom rug.
“You sure make it go fast,” Sparrow remarked. “Whada ya wanna do now? It’s still pouring rain.”
“You want to play one of my board games?”
“Okay . . . unless . . . uh . . .”
“What?”
“Think your ma would let us watch the TV?” she asked hopefully.
“On weekdays, I’m only allowed one hour of TV before bed—even when it’s raining. Mom says it’ll rot your brain. Friday night, I get two hours and then Saturday morning cartoons—I think Dad likes them more than I do. You should hear him laugh at the Road Runner—meep-meep.” We laughed. “Hey, maybe you could sleep over some Friday night and we could watch TV—even watch cartoons Saturday morning.”
“Sounds great. Grandpa Gorski brought us to Baker’s one Saturday so we could watch some cartoons in the TV department. He must’ve tried on six pairs of shoes so Timmy could see Bugs Bunny. But when he didn’t buy none, the manager started giving us dirty looks.”
“Hah!”
“So, what games do you got?”
I started pulling the boxes from under my bed—they were dusty again but not as bad as last time I went under there. I really missed having shelves for all my games but certainly wouldn’t mention it. I’d become acutely aware of how much I had, compared to people who had next to nothing.
“The Game of Life is fun,” I said, dusting off the cover with my hand, “but it takes a long time. How about Scrabble?”
“Seems too much like school.”
“I’ve got Winner Spinner . . . but it’s better with more players. Here’s Concentration . . . and Clue . . .”
“I’ve never played either of ’em, but they look interesting. What about this one?” she asked, holding up the Cootie Bug game.
“Open it. It’s kinda babyish, but I still like it. You roll the dice and see who gets all the bug’s parts first . . . like this.” I stuck the little legs, eyes, and antennas into the brown plastic bug body. She tried it, but wanted to see them all before we chose one.
“I have a set of pick-up sticks too,” she remarked, holding up my can of plastic sticks.
“I’ve gotta go to the bathroom before we start,” I announced. “You pick out a game. Look at anything you want,” I offered.
I must’ve been gone for ten minutes. When I returned, Sparrow had Chutes and Ladders all set up.
“Did you fall in?” she asked wryly.
“Hardy ha-ha. No, not this time . . . Thanks for asking.”
“That reminds me—when I was little, my ma worried that I really might fall down the hole in the outhouse. Unless she had time to stand right by me and wait, she made me use a pot in the house ’til I was about four,” she finished with a silly grin. I caught a contagious twinkle in her eye and we burst into a peel of giggles, the way girls do when they’re glad to be with a friend. Happy children don’t need much of a reason to laugh.
“Hey, is this a picture of you?” Sparrow handed me a black-and-white photograph. That’s when I noticed she’d gone through my mother’s box with the album. It had been left under the bed with the games, and I’d completely forgotten it. I hadn’t planned to look through it without asking, but now I was curious.
“Lemme see.” I took it. My young parents were posing with me as a baby, next to the Ford Woody. Even in black and
white, you could tell the car was brand new; the paint was shiny and the wooden side panels gleamed in the sun. They were wearing nice clothes, as if it they were on a holiday outing. It must have been warm, because Dad wore a white fedora and a light-colored suit. Mom looked slender and pretty in her floral summer dress. I appeared to be a toddler, between one and two years, and wore a one piece jumper with a puffy bottom to accommodate the diapers. My parents each held me by a hand as they smiled into the camera. I didn’t recognize the location; it was expansive and barren with no grass or trees in sight. I’d never seen anyplace like it.
“Hmm, it must be me, but I don’t know where it was taken.”
“That’s the southwest. Look at those rocky cliffs in the background. They’re in the desert, somewhere around Apache country.”
“Huh? Let me look at that again.” Something wasn’t right, but I wasn’t sure what. I took the small box of photos on my lap and began to examine each one carefully. There was another with Mom holding me on her hip, posing beside a road sign that read, Welcome to Arizona. I had my chubby legs wrapped around her middle and one little hand on her face, as if I wanted her to look at me instead of the camera. But the most interesting photo was taken with an old Indian woman posing in front of a teepee. She was dressed in full Indian regalia with feathers in her hair, holding the baby forth and mugging for the camera. I was wrapped up like a papoose in an Indian blanket, wearing a little headband with a feather sticking up. I eyed the strange woman warily and pouted, as if I were about to cry.
“Look,” I said, handing it to Sparrow.
“Aw, that’s cute, but you don’t look very happy. It’s probably too hot for that blanket.”
I looked again. An Indian blanket? It took me a moment to recognize it in black and white, but the pattern seemed awfully familiar. It was the car blanket.Now I was pretty sure that couldn’t be me, but if it wasn’t me . . . who was it?
“What’s the matter, Cassy? You look like you’re gonna be sick. Maybe you should go back to the bathroom?”
I deliberated a moment, then decided that whatever it was, I would share it with Sparrow. “My parents went on a trip to the southwest . . . before I was born. I wonder when these were taken.”
“Says June 1950 right on the back of that one.”
I flipped it over and looked. “B . . . but I . . . I wasn’t even born until—”
“Nineteen fifty-one,” she finished.
I opened the cover of the old photo album and carefully turned the brittle pages. About a third of the way in, the black paper had empty rectangular spaces with bits of dried glue wherever photographs had been removed. “Look, that’s gotta be me,” I said, pointing to a picture. My mother was sitting in our living room back in Racine, holding an infant in her lap. It was dated 1951. She looked different somehow, and I compared the pictures in the album side by side with the ones that had been removed and stashed in the box. Something jumped out at me: my parents did not look happy. My father looked as if he’d been very ill. There was a photo with both Mom and Dad seated on the davenport. Dad was holding the infant, so Tante Gudy probably took it. My parents were smiling, but it was strained and tired. My father’s face was so gaunt that his hollow cheeks were in dark gray shadow.
I knew I should shut the lid and return the box to my mother, but I had to know more. I took a deep breath and lifted out the manila folder full of documents, yellowed with age. “I think I know why I’ve never seen those pictures before . . . and why they were taken out of the album. I . . . I think I know what happened.”
“You think your folks had another baby . . . before you?”
“Sure looks that way.”
It only took a moment to leaf through and find the birth certificate. And the death certificate. I read aloud in a trembling voice: “Edward James Parsons, born November 30, 1949 . . .” I stopped.
Sparrow laid her hand on my leg. I hadn’t realized it was shaking. “Oh, Cassy . . . what is it?”
“Cause of death, acute . . . septicemia,” I struggled with the medical words, “from bacterial . . . meningitis . . . August 29th, 1951.”
“Exactly one month before your birthday,” she said softly.
“He must have been real sick . . . he was only,” I counted on my fingers, “a year and nine months.” I brushed away some tears and sniffed. “Poor little baby didn’t even make it to his second birthday. Oh God. Now it all makes sense.”
“What does?”
“My dad wanted a baby boy . . . instead of me.”
“Huh?”
“I overheard something last spring, before we left. My mother and aunt were having a big argument—more like a fight.”
“What about?”
“I’m not sure what it was about. They said all sorts of stupid stuff—my aunt said that Mom was too spoiled, and Mom said my aunt was too tall. I think it started because my mother was jealous: her sister inherited the two-family house, the whole thing, even the flat we used to live in. My mother got some money—don’t know how much. But the part I remember best is when Aunt Gudrun said Dad didn’t want me because he hoped for a son, so she should’ve taken me on a boat back to Norway to live with Uncle Lars. Then my mother said . . . oh, it’s too terrible.”
“What?”
“Mom agreed with Aunt Gudrun—said they all might’ve been happier if she had taken me back to Norway. My parents didn’t love me. Now I know why.”
“No . . . that can’t be right,” Sparrow insisted. “Your mom loves you. Your dad’s crazy about you.”
“I don’t remember everything they said, but that part definitely stuck. My father wanted a boy to replace little Eddie Parsons.” I broke down and sobbed quietly.
After a respectful moment she asked gently, “Are you gonna ask your mom and dad about the baby?”
“Oh, God, no; that’d be a bad idea. My mother would be upset that I found out and mad that I looked through her stuff. I knew I shouldn’t have read those papers.” I sniffed. “They probably planned to tell me someday, when I got older.”
“Seems like one of those things grownups don’t tell you when you’re a kid,” she affirmed. “I’m sorry I dragged it out.”
“It’s not your fault. I told you to look at whatever you wanted. I feel sick about what I did.” I carefully slipped the death certificate back into the envelope. “And the timing couldn’t be much worse, with that big party coming up. Now I’ve got to act like nothing happened, but it won’t be easy.”
“Wait, how old did you say the baby was?”
“About twenty months . . . Why?”
“Oh, it’s just sad, is all. Uh, can I look at that Arizona picture one more time before you put it away?”
“Sure.” I handed it to her. As she studied the photograph, I was sure I saw a flicker of recognition in her eyes. “What is it?” I insisted.
“Nothing. Your mom looks so young and pretty,” she said, handing it back. “Still does.” Before I could press the matter, I heard footsteps. “Someone’s coming,” she warned. In a panic, I plopped the papers back in the box and shoved it under the bed, stuffed the album behind it, and swooshed under a few stray photos just in time. As Mom opened the door, Sparrow nonchalantly rolled the dice for Chutes and Ladders.
“Anyone up for a snack? I made brownies . . . Oh, what’s wrong, Cassandra? Have you been crying?”
I forced a smile. “Uh, no . . . I was laughing because—”
“We were laughing about how my ma made me pee in a pot when I was little, so I wouldn’t fall down the hole in the outhouse,” Sparrow said, which was perfectly true.
“Eew.” Mom unconsciously wrinkled her nose at the thought.
“Ya, I laughed so hard I cried,” I said to back up her story. “Thanks for the brownies, Mom. We’ll be there in a jiffy.”
24
“NANA’S COME INTO season!” Sparrow announced excitedly over the din, pointing at the Nubian goat with the long floppy ears. The doe was pacing her pen in circles
and bleating plaintively, making even more of a racket than usual. The big Toggenburg doe was locked in the shed, standing on her hind legs with her head poking out the window and calling anxiously to her companion.
It was a crisp, sunny Saturday morning. I’d cut through the woods to visit my friend, eager to play outdoors again after three straight days of hard, cold rain. The long walk did me good. Ever since my ill-fated snooping, the secret knowledge of my dead baby brother sat on my shoulders like a fifty-pound rucksack.
“Ah . . . well, congratulations,” I said, pretending to know what Sparrow was all fired up about.
“Grandpa Wind’s gonna bring Olaf this morning,” she added. “Should be here soon. Grandpa Gorski’s taken Ma and Timmy to town for supplies. You wanna hang around and watch the show?” she asked with a smirk.
Then I understood that it was time for the goat to be bred, so she would have kids and fresh milk. This was the chance I’d been waiting for, the moment when the greatest mystery of life would be revealed at last.
“Sure, I’d be happy to help out . . . if you need me,” I added.
Sparrow looked at me cockeyed. “Olaf don’t need no help. Cassy, you really don’t know . . . uh, how they do it?”
“No. But it’s about time I found out.”
“Hmm . . . guess it is. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know.”
“Uh, what exactly does Olaf do?”
“It all happens right there.” She pointed to the swollen pink flesh beneath the doe’s tail. “That’s where the buck’s seeds go in, and it’s where her kids come out.”
“I thought that’s where she went pee.”
“That’s only one little hole.” She pointed. “This whole thing is the vulva. Inside is the birth canal.”
“The baby goats must be really tiny to fit through that,” I remarked.
“They’re ’bout this big.” She held her hand off the ground at the height of a three-month-old retriever puppy. I felt my eyes go wide. “It stretches,” she added.